Emergency situations call for fast acting responses and notifications of a potential adverse or emergency scenario. There are a number of systems that have an audible warning device (i.e. an alarm) that emits a loud, continuous or intermittent noise upon activation. Typically, such alarms can alert to the presence of smoke, carbon monoxide and other hazardous substances, home intruders, and a number of other potentially deadly conditions.
Carbon monoxide typically results in upwards of 200 deaths per year and places many thousands more in the hospitals each year. Fires, in the home or office, kill thousands annually and injure many thousands more, as well as causing substantive damage to property. As such, the importance of proper alarm system are paramount in these life threatening conditions and are often required to be placed in a structure to adhere with local laws and ordinances.
There are, however, a number of shortcomings associated with the above alarms and other audible alarm systems. For example, an audible alarm may not alert someone who is deaf or hard of hearing to one of the aforementioned conditions. Typically, home alarm-based systems do not have any type of visual indicator, such as a flashing light, that would further alert such people to a dangerous condition.
Additionally, a structure with a particular alarm set-up may have no individuals in the dwelling at the time of the emergency. Depending on the type of alarm system, the alarm system may or may not contact the authorities or other responsive personal upon activation. Thus, the emergency condition could go unnoticed for some duration of time thereby resulting in substantial property damage or loss.
In other instances, an alarm may go off when some individuals are at a structure, such as a home, and others are not present at that location. If there is an emergency, those outside the home may not know and will have no way to verify the safety of those present in the home without an adequate warning to a potentially deadly condition.
Thus, there is need for a system that can alert anyone to the presence of the activation of an alarm thereby alerting them to a potentially deadly condition. This system can act wirelessly and monitor the home or other structure and send notifications, alerts, and the like regarding the operative state of any number of alarms present in or outside the structure. Further, such a system should be able to be retrofit to any existing system thereby providing a cheap and simple solution to the above shortcomings. The present invention and its embodiments meets and exceeds these objectives.